“Are you two friends?”
“He’s not who I call to have a beer with, and that’s only partly because he’s a teetotaler. But we’ve begun to log a lot of hours together, and he holds up. He’s a quality guy, and the sharpest mind. I’ll bring in the big guns as the race heats up, but I’m not sure there’s a more talented strategist out there than Ucks. He’s spectacular at thinking through the big picture, anticipating attacks from the other side—I’ll be sure to get a lot of nepotism crap, and his thing is, address it and move on. We control the agenda.”
The waitress brought our beers—Charlie had ordered a Miller, so I had, too—and Charlie knocked his bottle toward mine. “Cheers.”
“So what are the other questions that would determine whether or not I’m fit to go out with a congressional candidate?” I asked. “Hypothetically, of course.”
He took a long sip of beer. “There’s the problem of your party affiliation.” He still seemed mischievous, though, not really serious. “Why are you a Democrat, anyway? I mean, Jimmy Carter—how can you stand that peanut- growing goofball?”
“He compares pretty favorably to Nixon.”
Charlie shook his head. “Nixon is out of the picture. New day, new order.”
“I think it’s standard for public school teachers to be Democrats,” I said. “You’d be surprised how many of my students have to get free lunches.”
“I assume these are the kids of the black welfare mothers moving in from Chicago?”
“That doesn’t seem like a very nice way to put it.”
“You just have a soft heart,” Charlie said. “That’s why you think you’re a Dem. You’ll get older, come into some money, and see where you stand then.”
“Aren’t we the same age?”
“But I grew up around all this. I’ve been thinking about it longer.”
“I’m not a Democrat because I haven’t thought about the issues,” I said. “I’m a Democrat because I have.”
“Holy cats, woman, you ever thought of writing speeches? You’re not convincing me, but a lot of people would eat that shit up. Pardon my French.”
“You know, I grew up in Riley, right near Houghton,” I said. “Houghton High was our rival. So if you need to know anything about the place you allegedly live, I might be able to help you, but only if you quit mocking my political party.”
“In that case, I don’t have to explain to you why I live there in name only,” he said. “I go once a week, collect mail, make sure a raccoon hasn’t destroyed the place, and get the hell back out of Dodge.”
“If it’s so awful, you could have picked somewhere else.”
Charlie shook his head. “Sixth District extends up to Appleton, but we have factories in the north, so that’s taken care of. Down south is Alvin Wincek’s stronghold, where we gotta focus. See, you’re lucky you grew up in Riley instead of Houghton—Meersman is your rep, right? There’s a good Republican team player for you, Bud Meersman.”
“I’ve never voted in Riley,” I said. “The first time I was eligible was in ’68, and I registered in Madison.”
“Please don’t say you voted for Humphrey.”
“Charlie, I’m a Democrat,” I said. “Of course I did.”
“It’s people like you that cost my dad the race,” Charlie said, and though there were several reasons I could have pointed to that Governor Blackwell hadn’t been elected president in ’68—he hadn’t even been one of the final three Republican candidates—it did not seem that Charlie was completely kidding.
The waitress appeared carrying red oval plastic baskets, the food nestled inside them in waxed paper. “You see if that’s to your liking,” she said, and Charlie replied, “I’m sure it will be, Miss Evelyn.”
As I sliced my burger in half, I said, “So why’d you go to school in the East?”
“Are you referring to my
?” He pronounced the words in a mincing way. “Believe me, it’s worse than Princeton and Penn. First, I was shipped off to boarding school—a little place called Exeter that’s basically a breeding ground for snobs. It’s in New Hampshire, my mother grew up in Boston, and she’s still enamored with the East Coast way of life—you can take the girl out of Massachusetts, et cetera, et cetera. So we all did our time at Exeter, then four years at Old Nassau, as the cognoscenti call Princeton, then Wharton. I made some terrific friends, and I did learn a thing or two in spite of my best efforts, but make no mistake, New England trust-funders are not my people. It’s all very
very cold and fake. You go to one of their weddings—I was a groomsman for a fellow from New Canaan—and it’s the most uptight affair this side of a funeral. That ain’t my style.”
“But if you were the son of the governor, I’d think you grew up belonging to the Madison Country Club and all that.”
Charlie scoffed. “The Madison Country Club is for parvenus, sweetheart. The Maronee Country Club is where those in the know belong. It’s north of Milwaukee.”
“Is that a joke?”
“What?” His expression was defensive but lightheartedly so, how he might have looked if he’d been accused of eating the last cookie in the jar.
